Attendance Boundary for New Beulah Middle School goes East past HWY 29...

Today the Escambia County School Board held a meeting where they discussed the new attendance zone boundaries for Beulah Middle School.  I took a screen shot from the video, that is why this picture is of poor quality.  I was proud of the fact that our newly elected school board member from district 1, Kevin Adams, took issue with the extent of the boundaries and how they extend so far to the East.  I share his concern, and I believe the way this is drawn it will exacerbate existing traffic issues in Beulah.  We will see how this is eventually voted, but this concerns me.

More importantly, it concerns me because I am well aware of the tremendous growth Beulah is experiencing right now, and I knew this several years ago when I voted AGAINST this middle school...I knew then what I know to be true today--our middle school enrollment when compared to our capacity illustrated that we had sufficient capacity at that time to simply re-zone the boundaries and work within our existing facilities.  Our district is experiencing declining enrollment--so why build this brand new giant middle school was my question.  I strongly felt we needed another ELEMENTARY school in Beulah--and I know I was right because even after we finish Kingsfield Elementary and we start taking half of Beulah's students up there---we will still need portables at Beulah elementary and we will be building a stand alone cafeteria there (at the expense of additional PE facilities)

So, in my opinion, we went with the wrong plan, and now the zoning is going to complicate traffic.  This new zoning just makes it much more urgent for us to get our new off-ramp from the I-10 in Beulah ASAP!